


know your devils and your deeds

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Moving On
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 01:47:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3877696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha's gotten used to living with the choices she makes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	know your devils and your deeds

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Joni Mitchell. Includes Age of Ultron spoilers, mostly re: Natasha's relationship therein. Also, past Steve/Bucky and Steve/Peggy.

Natasha's gotten used to living with the consequences of the choices she makes. She's still grateful for the ability to _make_ choices, good or bad. She can't--won't--take it for granted, even when the outcome leaves her with a sharp ache in her chest that feels like getting punched. She'd prefer getting punched, in fact, because that'd be one and done, a physical pain she could move past, instead of this stupid lingering soreness that Clint tells her succinctly is a broken heart.

She'd believed once that love was for children, and she'd still parroted the line like a proper puppet even after she'd cut her own strings. Maybe in a way, she'd been right--children are resilient, they bounce back more easily, believe in fairy tales even when the evidence proves them false over and over again. Maybe love requires hope, and that gets harder to hold onto the older people get. Except for her. In some ways, she feels like she's aging backwards, learning things now that other people knew as children and forgot, because she was never allowed to be a child when she actually was one.

Still, though, she wouldn't trade that feeling of a horizon opening before her, that sense of _potential_ for something new and good that she'd felt around Bruce in those last few months, not even knowing it ended in this piercing ache. She'd never been in love before, not really, though she'd faked it often enough when the job required it, and the feelings had been so fresh and fragile, a new creation in the wake of blowing up her old life, all her old covers, everything she'd known Natalia Alianovna Romanoff to be, both the girl raised by the Red Room and the woman she'd become since joining SHIELD. She'd thought she could be the version who was in love with Bruce, who could run away from being an Avenger to live in isolated splendor with him. But it turned out that the new-new Natasha had a few things in common with the old-new Natasha, including the inability to walk away when people were in danger and there was something she could do to help. Even if it meant betraying a man she thought she was falling in love with.

"Hey," Steve says, interrupting her reverie. 

She feels like a cliché, sitting in the cushioned window seat, watching raindrops race down the glass while she thinks about the sad state of her love life. 

"Hey," she replies, with a genuine smile. Steve is a constant, a touchstone, the way SHIELD had been, before everything, and the way Clint still is, but Steve is here and Clint isn't. 

"Dime for your thoughts?"

"Not a penny?"

He gives her a rueful grin. "Inflation. As Tony likes to remind me, things are more expensive in the future."

She laughs. "Not these thoughts," she says. He raises his eyebrows in question, and she quirks her mouth in response. "You know, 'the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.'"

"Bogey knew what he was talking about." Steve gives her shoulder a gentle, comforting squeeze. "Come on, Wanda's waiting to spar."

It's easy to throw herself into work, into training Wanda to fight and to be aware of her surroundings when she uses her powers. She enjoys planning battle tactics with Steve and Rhodey and Sam, and though she misses the surety of having Clint at her back, Steve is a solid anchor, someone just as tightly tied to this life as she is now. She appreciates his calmness under fire, his stalwart competence, and his dry humor. She's not sure why she ever expected him to be the stick in the mud Tony still pretends to believe he is, but she's glad that for once, she was wrong. She knows she could move forward on her own--she's done it more times than she cares to count--but it's nice that she doesn't have to, that her world can still include the quiet constant of Steve at her six when she needs him, his unwavering trust a soothing balm for her aching heart.

*

Steve hasn't given up on finding the Winter Soldier; he and Sam come and go from the facility regularly, still following cold leads and occasional explosions, but she gets the feeling that she's as much an anchor for him as he is for her. There's something nice about knowing he'll always come back if he can. She suddenly understands Clint's appreciation for his boomerang arrows, for all that they never quite worked right in actual combat.

Steve looks as lost as she's ever seen him a few weeks later, taking out his latest frustrations on the heavy bag in a way he hasn't since the immediate aftermath of DC.

"No luck?" she asks. 

He looks up and meets her gaze in the mirror. "What do you think?"

"I think he'll find you when he's ready."

He stops and turns, feet solidly planted so the swing of the bag doesn't knock him down. "I could say the same to you."

"You could, but you'd be wrong."

He crosses his arms over his chest. "Would I?"

"You didn't betray Bucky's trust."

"I left him to die. I never went back to look for his body."

"Because it's unbelievable that he could have survived that fall," she says. "And also, you practically died yourself only a few days later." He opens his mouth to argue but she keeps talking. "I know you don't believe me, and I can't claim to speak for him--he wasn't really Barnes when I met him--but I'm willing to bet he doesn't blame you."

"Well, he should."

"So your friend, who as far as you knew was dead from a fall that would have killed nearly anyone, should blame you for what HYDRA did? But Bruce shouldn't blame me for using him to win a fight?"

"They were torturing a prisoner of war. You were trying to save thousands, if not millions, of people."

"The needs of the many," she replies, nodding. "It sounds great, right up until you're one of the few, or the one." 

"I got that reference," he says, and Natasha lets out a small, rough laugh. 

"Tony would be so proud."

Steve gives her an answering snort of laughter and a sly, conspiratorial look. "Let's never tell him."

*

They're in a firefight in Glasgow when she says, "Did you ever call Sharon?"

Steve flings the shield, catches it on the return carom, and then ducks behind it, covering them both from a spray of bullets. "She's at the CIA now."

"So you did call her."

They put the conversation on pause to engage with some men dressed up like beekeepers (Natasha will never understand AIM's dress sense), but when they're scattered on the ground like empty banana peels and the fighting is over, and they've called for extraction, Steve says, "Not exactly. I ran into her at Peggy's." He looks sheepish and leans against an overturned BMW they'd taken cover behind earlier. "Did you know she's Peggy's great-niece?"

Natasha licks her lips and joins him, their hips pressed together comfortably. "I did, actually."

"Yeah, so." He rolls his shoulders and winces when the motion pulls at a cut on his chest. "Peggy was all for it, which was just weird for both of us. We've had coffee a couple of times when I'm in DC, but mostly so she can pump me for information about Sam."

"Huh. They'd be a cute couple."

"That's what I said." He pokes at the tear in his uniform and she slaps his hand away playfully. "I was thinking of recruiting her, actually."

"For the Avengers."

"Yeah. She's calm under pressure and if she's anything like Peggy, she'd be a formidable addition to the team."

"It'd be nice to have another woman around. I like Wanda but she's very...young."

"That's what Hill said, too."

"Hmm."

"So really, it's better all around for us to just be friends."

"Hill gave you the speech about fraternization?"

"I told her it wouldn't be a problem." He grimaces. "Sharon and Sam are mature adults. I'm sure they can handle it."

Natasha hums again, thoughtfully this time. "You're not against intra-team dating?"

"It seemed to work for the Theban band."

She blinks, surprised, though she probably shouldn't be. "Until Alexander."

He nods. "I don't think we're facing any modern-day Alexanders, Nat."

"Probably not facing them, no. Have one on our side, maybe." 

He blushes but gives her a long, searching look that makes her belly flip. "Even he had his Hephaistion."

She blinks but keeps her expression free of surprise. Instead, her mouth curls into a wry half-grin. "Did Captain America just come out to me?"

His laugh is soft and wistful. "Maybe."

"So you like men."

"And women. Men and women," he clarifies. "I love Peggy. I love Bucky. I'll never get to have a life with her and I don't know what he'll want if I ever get him back." He pulls off his helmet to scrub a hand through his sweat-darkened hair. "I can love more than one person at a time." There's a hopeful look in his eye, one that calls up an answering hope in her she'd thought she'd lost when Bruce left. "How about you?"

Natasha freezes. He dips his head and kisses her. She could stop him if she wanted to. Instead, she puts a hand on his cheek and returns the kiss. It's better than the one they shared while on the run from SHIELD, probably because he's not surprised into it, or maybe because this time, it's for real. It sparks something in her that feels like desire, where before there'd only been the sweetness of affection and a more impersonal acknowledgement of attraction she never expected to act on.

She pulls back and looks up at him steadily. "You're not afraid I'm going to betray you? Give you a kiss and slip in the knife?" She only sounds like she's joking.

Steve's gaze doesn't waver. "To save the world? I wouldn't expect anything less."

There's a warmth in her chest that eases the ache she's been living with for so long, and it makes her gasp in surprise, in pleasure. Instead of answering in words, Natasha kisses him.

end


End file.
